Thursday, April 24, 2008

Sam (who grows and delivers our veg.) says the time will come when ravening hoards from cities will descend upon the countryside in search of food - and strip it bare.

There will be famine.

There will be violence.

Last night, it seems, an advance guard came from the ground (disguised as slugs) and ate all the chives in my garden.

There's been a bit of a surge on the Romanesques too - but nothing (neither slug, nor child nor snail) has bothered with the single Globe Artichoke I planted at the front of the house.

Good.

We've had a letter from the school.

This term, Year 5 will be learning about light and sound.

At breakfast, Worthing asked Ming if he knows anything about 'velocity'.

Grabbing a piece of charcoal from the cupboard where we keep things for 'Drawing With' Ming leapt onto a kitchen chair and began to fill the wall with equations and diagrams and pictures of spaceships.

(I think The Tudors have been getting him down recently.)

Worthing was entranced.

The post arrived - a paint chart.

Good timing!

Spring Cleaning should already have been under way - but it's such a chore!

It might be quicker (I've been thinking)
- and more entertaining ( I've been thinking) -
to paint over the dirt than to wash it off!

Worthing took hold of the chart. He was angry. He didn't like the idea of Ming's equations being painted over so soon.

"Spaceships and diagrams are more interesting than blankness and whiteness and boring old cleanness!" he said.

Ugh, I shudder to think about the coming of the slugs. That's one creature that really grosses me out. I hate when I'm working in the garden and one gets stuck to my finger. Yuck. They are awful things, good for nothing as far as I can tell.

I scatter crushed egg shells around some of the vulnerable plants. It seems to help a bit. The old beer in cup trick works well too. I buy the least expensive beer I can find. Slugs do not deserve quality beer, not even for their last meal.

Still it seems there are always more where the drunken, drowned slugs came from. Maybe they came from a slug AA meeting. I wish they'd all start drinking.

FOR CONTENTS

CLICK THE BLUE BARROW

MING

MING'S SPACESHIP

(DISGUISED AS A 1950'S SUITCASE AND HIDDEN IN THE SHED)

MARTIAN

sounds like a cross between Welsh and Chinese.

Much of it comes from the back of the throat, ripples along the tongue and slams into the roof of the mouth.The intonation goes up and down a lot (which is pleasant) - but there are also a lot of startling exclamations mixed in, making the speaker seem aggressive to those who (like me) are used to speaking English.(Even when they aren't.)(Aggressive.)